Basic principles of memory

Question 1

What is primary memory

Answer 1

• Portion of present space of time
• Linked to conscious experience
• Retrieval is effortless

Question 2

What is secondary memory

Answer 2

• Genuine past
• Unconscious - permanent
• Retrieval is effortful

Question 3

What is atkinson and shiffrin’s(1968) modal model of memory

Answer 3

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Question 4

What is sensory memory

Answer 4

• Sensations persist after the stimulus has disappeared
• Subject to very rapid decay
• Stores exist for visual(iconic) and auditory(echoic) sensory information

Question 5

What did sperlin’s experiments show

Answer 5

• Memory for images fades after 1/3 seconds

Question 6

What did baddley’s 1986 experiment show

Answer 6

• Reasoning time increases in with digit load(consistent with unitary STS)
• But, increase in reasoning time is modest
• Error rate does not increase at all

Question 7

What is baddeley and hitch’s(1974) working memory model

Answer 7

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Question 8

What is working memory

Answer 8

• The part of the short-term memory which is concerned with immediate conscious perceptual and linguistic processing

Question 9

How did baddeley’s 1966 experiment show evidence for the phonological store

Answer 9

• Large effect of phonological similarity

- No effect of semantic similarity

Question 10

How did Baddeley’s 1975 experiment show evidence for the phonological store

Answer 10

Word length effect:

• Correct recall related to number of syllables
• Strong correlation between reading speed and correct recall
• Same effect found if number of syllables is the same but the lists are quicker to say

Question 11

Where do lesions causing short-term memory loss usually arise?

Answer 11

• Left hemisphere usually affecting the parietal and temporal lobes

Question 12

What are the contents of a phonological store actively refreshed by?

Answer 12

• An articulatory loop

- Disruption of the articulatory loop(eg saying ‘the, the the’ results in poor retention in the phonological store

Question 13

What is the visuospatial sketchpad

Answer 13

• Necessary for holding online a sequence of visually guided actions - corsi ‘block tapping’ task
• Also necessary for ‘seeing in the mind’s eye’

Question 14

What is the evidence for the visuospatial sketchpad

Answer 14

• De Renzi and Nichelli(1975) showed some patients with brain damage had impaired digit spans some had impaired spatial spans
• ‘Double dissociation’ ; evidence for independent processes

Question 15

What has subsequent research shown about the visuospatial sketchpad

Answer 15

• Logie, 1995
• Visual cache - passively stores visual info about form and colour
• Inner scribe - stores spatial and movement info and can rehearse the contents of the visual cache

Question 16

What is some other evidence for the visuospatial sketchpad besides De renzi and nichelli?

Answer 16

• Viewing abstract pictures interfered with the visual task, whereas tracing the outline of a series of pegs on a board interfered with the spatial task
• Della sala et al. 1999

Question 17

Who introduced the concept of “levels of processing”

Answer 17

• Craik and lockhart(1972)

Question 18

What did the roediger and karpicke(2006) study show

Answer 18

• Studying and then testing yourself leads to much better retention
• Retrieval practice effect

Question 19

What did the morris et al. 1977 test show

Answer 19

• Processing is goal directed
• A ‘shallow’ processing task might be better if retrieval uses the same type of processing
• Transfer appropriate processing

Question 20

What did the godden and baddeley(1975) test show

Answer 20

• Learnt lists of words - on land or under sea
• Tested for words - on land or under sea
• ‘Context’ dependent memory
• Also occurs for mood ‘state’ dependent memory eich and metcalfe 1989)